Nuno Bettencourt of Extreme shares more insight about Ozzy’s farewell show

Extreme guitarist Nuno Bettencourt reflected on his involvement in the “Back To The Beginning” concert, which marked Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath’s final performance, during an appearance on the most recent episode of the “Steve And Rik’s POTcast,” which is hosted by Steve Whiteman (of KIX fame) and Rik Parks. This is what he stated, as transcribed by blabbermouth.net.

When I got a call to do that, which I was, like, ‘Oh my God, I get to go and play two songs.’ And everybody was doing two songs, and [they] hit [me] up, like, ‘Hey, can you do a Randy [Rhoads] song and ‘Bark At The Moon’ stuff, ’cause you’re able to play this stuff?’ I’m, like, ‘Great. I’m on it.’ And then I get a call, like, three or four days later, ‘Can we throw three more at you?’ And I kept going, like, ‘Wait, what’s going on?’ They go, ‘Oh, Wolfgang Van Halen just dropped out.’ I’m, like, ‘Well, what are the songs?’ Yeah, he’s dropping out ’cause he’s smart.

Nobody wants to play those fucking Randy Rhoads or Jake E. Lee solos, or whatever it is, nobody wants to fucking do it because if you go down in flames on that stage with Ozzy there and all your peers watching you, your career’s over. So then I was at five songs, and I’m sitting here in this room and I’m going, ‘Okay, let me fucking decipher this shit.’ And then they [went], ‘Can we throw another three [songs at you]?’ I ended up playing 12 fucking songs. And you know me, I’m, like, yeah, but instead of learning ’em, I was, like, ‘Well, I gotta fucking own this shit. I gotta put the time in [and go] all in. You gotta fucking get your shit together.

I didn’t even know it was even [gonna be] streamed [globally] at the time. I thought it was just in front of the audience [at the stadium], which is big enough anyways. But then two days before, my manager was, like, ‘Oh, by the way, they’re streaming this globally.’ I’m, like, ‘What?’ I’m, like, ‘Wait a second. What?’ [He was, like], ‘Yeah, [there’s gonna be] millions of people watching.’ I’m, like, ‘Great.’ I’m playing all these other songs I’d never played before on stage with a band that you’ve never played with before. And so, once that happened, you realize that you walk off the stage and you’re doing it — never mind the rehearsals.

You show up, and you don’t know that at all the rehearsals all those artists are gonna be there, and they’re just sitting on the floor watching you to see if you can actually play this shit or not. And the phones are up. And the reason it was so important to do the homework and to actually own the songs and put in the hours as if… What was said to me by — I don’t know if you guys know who [producer and YouTuber] Rick Beato is or whatever. but he said to me, he called me up, he goes, ‘Everybody was raving about your performance.’ But he goes, ‘One thing I noticed is you didn’t just learn the stuff. You performed it.’ And he goes, ‘That’s what stuck out for you more than everybody else.’

And I said, ‘But I just did what I normally do.’ I didn’t try to go, and I didn’t even know if anybody’s gonna notice. I just wanted to respect the songs, know them and show up and know my shit and fucking go all in and do what I do. And also sing, do the harmonies, do everything that nobody’s expecting you to do. And I sat in this room — instead of learning it, maybe doing an hour on each song, I was in here for like weeks, for fucking four or five hours a day, standing up, performing the fuckers, knowing it all. Not sitting in the chair, ’cause that’s easy, but like down low where it’s 20 times harder to play down by your fucking knees, ’cause it looks better.

And I just showed up and just fucking went all in. And all of a sudden I was, like, ‘Wait, what just happened? Everybody’s fucking [raving about it].’ And all I did was be me. All I did was — do what you do, show up and fucking deliver. And that’s it.